Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Coaching and New Consciousness

One of the reasons I love painting with watercolor is the lack of control you experience while painting. Once the paper is wet and the paint introduced, anything can happen. Sometimes you facilitate the rendezvous of two different colors into each other. This is the most fun, and the most frustrating part of painting with watercolor, you have little control over the end result. I find that I do my best work when I have no expectation and truly play with the medium and the paints. Things happen that are beyond my imagination and it grows and expands in ways that I couldn’t have planned for. However, for me to have this grand experience, I have to be willing to be present, playful, and drop all of my expectations.

I find living life in the new consciousness and coaching to be similar to painting with watercolor in that way. New consciousness is about living a life that flows, a life without harsh edges. Old consciousness is all about those darned edges. In fact, we have all been trained to sharpen our tools so we can be masters of creating sharp edges. In so many ways, it has been fun, cutting and being cut! But now for those of us who are tired of that game, it is time to move on. This is easy to say, but what does it mean? Everything that we have known and most of what we have experienced has been made up of old consciousness. So, how do we operate in a medium that we don’t “know” anything about. There- in lies the answer. “Knowing” in old consciousness has been about the head, the brain. “Knowing” in new consciousness is about something much deeper that goes beyond the mind. For example, I know in my head that blue and red make purple, but what happens when I allow turquoise blue that is somewhat dry, to touch the alizarin crimson that is runny and wet? It is definitely not purple! Now, if I just trusted that piece of information that I have learned and re-learned from some book or class somewhere, I might not have experimented with those two colors in those two states. Or worse yet, I would expect purple to emerge (the purple that I have seen in the back of a crayon box somewhere) and be sadly disappointed at the messy color on the expensive paper! Similarly, in coaching, anything can happen, and clients are usually amazed at the outcomes they obtain especially if they’ve been open and willing to let go of their harsh beliefs.

Life in the new consciousness asks us to let go of our hard earned knowledge and be prepared to travel the road without our luggage full of expectations. Life in the new consciousness asks us to walk a bit barefoot on the grass and feel the blades against the soles of our feet and breathe the vibrant green in between our toes into our feet and up our calves. Life in the new consciousness asks us to stay a while, take a break, smooth out those edges, let our colors run into each other, and be willing to be amazed.